OK, so everyone and their pet has by now read Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code". Yes, I admit, I have as well. Since the movie is coming out these days, there's a new spike in interest in the DaVinci Code – including in one of the locations of the plot, the Manhattan digs of Opus Dei. Even New York Magazine [1] got in on the act, talking to some of the young, chiseled and avowedly celibate adherents of Opus Dei in their sex-segregated dorm.

“I can deal with telling some girls, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t put myself in that situation,’ says Hoff. He was in Sigma Chi at UCLA and says that in some ways, being a numerary is like never leaving the frat house. “It’s a blast,” says Keefe. Hoff plays guitar, and the guys have sing-alongs (“Hotel California” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” are favorites). “I know it sounds campy, but it’s not,” Keefe insists. They go out for beers sometimes: “I mean, I still have fun,” says Hoff. “You just can’t do everything you want.”

But what about the parts in The Da Vinci Code where the albino villain chants “Pain is good” while wearing a spiked cilice (a wire band worn around the thigh) and lashes himself violently with a rope? For these guys, it’s apparently less hard-core: two hours of barbed-cilice time a day, and the rope used for weekly “discipline” during prayer is really quite dainty. Mostly they engage in “spiritual mortifications” as a reminder of Christ’s suffering.

Dudes. There are Jeff Stryker movies that are less obviously gay. Sing-alongs of "Hotel California"? Sex-segregated dorms where you're surrounded by other sex-starved young men? Weekly beatings with a dainty rope? And you use "campy" in a sentence?

Hello Mary? Can you come out now, please?

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